Why Australia should walk away from AUKUS

Published in Pearls and Irritations, 14 January 2026

Trump’s actions in Venezuela and rhetoric elsewhere confirm that the United States no longer respects international law or allied interests. Australia should rethink its strategic dependence accordingly.

Trump’s Venezuela actions and grotesque Greenland rhetoric put beyond doubt that his America has zero respect for international law, morality, and the interests of its allies and partners. It’s a wake-up call that can no longer be ignored by the Australian government.

It’s now more than time for the AUKUS submarine project to be abandoned, and our defence capability to be built in our own interests, not those of a now totally unreliable United States.

AUKUS has been problematic from the outset, in terms of its deliverability, cost-benefit, and implications for our sovereign decision-making agency. Above all, the crazy irony of the whole project has always been that it commits Australia to spending eye-watering amounts to build a capability supposed to defend us from military threats which are in fact most likely to arise simply because we have that capability – and are using it to support the US in some conflict not in our interests to engage, without any guarantee of support in return should we ever need it.

Gareth Evans was Cabinet Minister throughout the Hawke-Keating governments, including as Foreign Minister from 1988-96; led the Brussels-based International Crisis Group from 2000-09; and was Chancellor of the Australian National University from 2010-19, where he is now Distinguished Honorary Professor. He co-chaired major international commissions on mass atrocity crimes and nuclear weapons, and has written or edited fourteen books, most recently Good International Citizenship: The Case for Decency and Incorrigible Optimist: A Political Memoir.

This article was first published in Pearls and Irritations on 14 January 2026